Tit Bits
• Team ASL "A Spanish Life"

Tit Bits

Its surprising to find that all the cats and dogs that seem to wander aroundhomeless are so friendly, they seem to survive on scraps supplied fromnumerous households and from scavenging through bins. Their lives seemto be in constant danger, starvation or an accident is the most commondemise but if one of these unfortunate creatures can be captured then theperson doing the capturing can sell it for two lei. But don’t be alarmed,Moldavian people do not eat them, they are just used to make soap!The culture towards shopping is very different from our own, as it isnecessary for the people to do it on a daily basis. There isn’t any pleasure init what so ever, endless queues to buy nothing. This could be the reason whyall politeness seems to have gone, forget words like please and thank you,all Russians simply say is ‘give me’.There seems to be a great deal of everyday words from the English languagethat has no meaning whatsoever in Russian. Words such as, is, are, a, and,they do not exist, which not only makes it impossible to translate butdifficult to learn, as we use these words to join up sentences.Water, gas, Heating and electricity are in the total control of thegovernment; they not only decide the cost but also when it is available. Thismeans that it is possible to be without all supplies at once if they so wish.With temperatures as low as minus twenty-five, life becomes very cold andmiserable.A few months after the great independence, for some reason the country ranout of tobacco for four months. The capitalist amongst the people quicklycame up with the idea of hunting the streets and tips for old cigarette endswhich they would take apart so as to extract the little tobacco it held, put itinto small bags and sell it on the street markets for an extortionate price.Apart from Vodka, it seems that the country' s delicacies is sunflower seeds.Little old ladies sell them on every street corner. These seeds are crackedopen in the mouth and the small seed eaten. The hard shell then is spat out.It seems to be a pastime occupied by old and young alike. Trying it justonce when it took me ten minutes to open one and its contents was nothingto get excited about.

In general the dentist is feared here as in our own country, but for a verydifferent reason. With the lack of medicines teeth are filled without anyanaesthetic and for those who cannot pay, teeth are also extracted in thesame way.The situation for some has gotten so bad that they have gone into the graverobbing business, not only for the clothes and jewellery but bodies are alsostolen. Once a woman who had buried her husband in his Sunday bestdiscovered that a winning lottery ticket had been left in his suit pocket.After seeking permission to resume his body she found that her husbandwas naked. Some weeks later a man was arrested trying to claim the lotteryprize.Insisting that it was his ticket, a fact that was difficult to disprove, but then itwas discovered that the suit, which he was wearing, belonged to the deadman and still had his name tags sewn into the lining.Russians play cards with a passion, but their games are very different fromour own mainly because their packs do not have twos, threes, fours andfives in them. In total only thirty-six cards.A spider loving people, it is believed to have one inones house is good luck, but to kill it is a sin.Television can be very confusing at times. Some programmes that havebeen made in English are dubbed in German; it then has a Russian voicetalking over the German and is subtitled in Rumanian. The silly thing aboutit all is that they only have one speaker for all the parts.With so many different languages being spoken, it is quite common for afamily to have a conversation in four languages.In this lawless country, the corruption has even got on to the television withpirate videos being shown on a daily basis. Three Lei a month is the cost ofa subscription fee to watch films that have company warnings stating thatthey are not for retail showing or hire. Also if one watches them it should bereported. This also extends to the music industry with open copying done indepartment stores, and then sold for a fraction of the price in the streets.

In most houses you will see the normal collection of glasses and plates ondisplay, but amongst the cut glass you will find wrapping papers fromchocolate bars like Mars or Twix these are treasured items due to thembeing rare Western things.Market and street sellers are regarded as being people of privilege andlooked upon as influential with in the community, because they are regardedas the new Capitalists. Standing outside in the snow in temperatures ofminus 15 from six in the morning until dark in my mind is nothing special,even more so when you would be lucky to make £1 per day.The financial system of each of the new countries are still very connectedwith each other. For example in a one month period the Rouble in Russiawas devalued, so the Ukraine banned the Dollar in an attempt to stabilizedthe Coupon, and Moldova made it illegal to use any coins. The reason givenwas that a lot had been forged, and not the real reason that they could notafford to make them any more.There is no heat control in any of the apartments, only the government candecided how hot or cold you are. Or when you can have it on.